What did Mr Obama expect would happen when he signed a cumbersome, dubiously constitutional, hotly contested, not-very-popular piece of delayed-action legislation which barely squeezed through an unprecedentedly polarised congress?

I think you have missed the point. Your statement now applies to the substantial majority of any legislation. We thought healthcare was unique, now we realise it isnt. Given the chance, Republicans will filibuster anything that they dont consider to be 100% conservative and not a Democrat idea, (everything is now 'hotly contested').
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Regardless of whether the ruling was 5-4 or 9-0, the SC ruled that Obamacare is constitutional, there is nothing dubious about it.

As I've said before, SCOTUS did Obamacare no favors. Sorry Omricon, but I agree with W.W. I don't think Mr Obama predicted that so many states would refuse to set up health-plan exchanges. For example, the Florida Governor fiercely opposed Obamacare, then later tried to accept federal funds but the state legislature voted it down. You can support Obamacare all you want but that won't make it any easier to implement.

I can agree with everything you wrote in your reply and half of what WW is saying. Obama simply could not predict that the Republicans would become the most obstructionist non-compromising minority party in all of American history, nor could he predict that they would actually cease caring about doing a good job or passing sensible legislation in order to 'get at' the democrats.

PS The Florida example is great, its a great example of cutting off the nose to spite one face. It reminds me of that Palestinian who died because he refused a blood transfusion because the blood had come from a Jew. Substitute transfusion=money Democrat=Israeli and Palestinian=Republican in the above example and you get my gist.

I could trust them if the Republicans allowed them to be funded properly. Right now I dont,. not because of the scandal but mainly because they are going to end up taking shortcuts. I dont think we have heard the end of this.
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Having said that, it is better for the IRS to attempt this than to stay with the status quo.

I would have thought that it's the obligation of the opposition party to engage with a law they can't repeal to make it the most palatable they can to their supporters instead of sabotaging it for everybody. I figured it's the obligation of a heavily checked-and-balanced democratic republican legislature to engage on behalf of their constituents, and to examine second-best options and move towards them when their first preference isn't achievable. But maybe I'm a naive dinosaur. Rawr rawr.

" The Republicans view ObamaCare as an exercise in tyranny. "
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Yet it was their idea. See Heritage Foundation, Mitt Romney's plan, the Bush administration's approval of Romneycare, etc.
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Sorry, but it sounds a little too much like "Oceana was always at war with Eurasia, it was never Eurasia's ally"

Didn't know the Heritage Foundation spoke for the Republicans? I cannot speak for the Heritage Foundation in the past, but they currently do not support ObamaCare.
The KKK used to be a militant-wing of the Democratic Party? What say you when I remind you that it was the Democrats idea for racial segregation? Why do you reject that idea now?

Drawing and equivalency between the Heritage Foundation and the KKK?
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I guess the kerfuffle over the immigration report of theirs with Jason Richwine means you are not the only one.
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Still bringing up the KKK and segregationist politics is a canard.
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The fact is Obamacare is Romneycare, which was a Republican creation. No matter what you say will change that fact.
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Nor the flip flopping or hypocrisy.

Nixon offered some form of universal health care; that doesn't mean it was his idea or value. Trying to come up with a solution to something your opponents have dragged into contention and made popular is not the same as valuing it yourself.

Oh go for it!
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Say reference them in the context of the rhetorical technique of the big lie (say something enough times and it will be treated as truth), which they supposedly popularized/mastered.
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The discussion thread here seems to be loosing a little momentum, but I bet there is still time.
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Godwin awaits you.

Look Mister! If you ain't got nothin' funny to say you aut not say nothin' at all! Now as to, "the big lie", I'm not really sure which big lie you're referring to?

Socrates is an honest man and very polite with his handling of Gorgias. If he's a little rough with Paulus, well..., well that's because Paulus had it comin to him! All I'm trying to say here is that you can't blame rhetoric for being rhetoric. All dogs don't go to heaven and guns don't kill people, people do.

The Republican Party, gleefully wielding the cheese grater, seems content to rail against blocks of cheese as being nothing more than a pile of shreds. Or, perhaps like a bicycle thief complaining that unlocked bicycles in DC are frequently stolen.

WW is the resident Republican, MS is the resident Democrat and everyone else is somewhere in between. This is a blog post and should be taken as an insight into the mind of one of few educated and (relatively) moderate Republicans in the media.

"What did he expect would happen if he signed a cumbersome, dubiously constitutional, hotly contested, not-very-popular piece of delayed-action legislation which barely squeezed through an unprecedentedly polarised congress?"

Except this was a Republican idea 7 years ago and the Republicans polarised the congress. (You have to much integrity not to know of the studies showing that the Republican shift to the right has been far greater than the democrat move to the left.)

It's like leaving your bike out and finding out that your neighbor who you didn't like, but was civil before, has stolen it.

The move towards socialized medicine (or at least a regime where private insurance companies are nailed to the wall and not treated as integral parts of the system) is one of those things that every rich civilized state across the world has done. Places like Taiwan, Singapore and Israel which are more conservative than the US is.

Liberals don't think they're on the vanguard of history with health reform, because they've been on the vanguard of history in other areas.

They think they are on the tail end of history dragging the reactionaries kicking and screaming to catch up with the rest of the group. (the 20+ other nations which do universal healthcare cheaper and better than we do.)

"You have to much integrity not to know of the studies showing that the Republican shift to the right has been far greater than the democrat move to the left."
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Depends on your time frame. In the last ten years? You could be right. In the last 50? You're definitely wrong - the Democrats have moved much further. The Democratic Party under JFK could pass for moderate Republicans today.

It's also true that the patron saint of modern conservatives, Ronald Reagan, was far too liberal and congenial (he actually... talked and worked with Democrats!!!!) to win a Republican primary in the last 10 years.

"Except this was a Republican idea 7 years ago"
Yes, a bad one that they never implemented (MA had an overwhelmingly Dem legislature). The question is why the Dems would take an idea their opponents rejected and use it as the core of their own? All I can figure is that they are arrogant enough to believe it will be different because its them doing it...

There are more votes on economic issues than social issues, especially at the federal level.

Douthat recently blogged about this. Democrats who think their party hasn't moved as much as the other party, without exception, ignore social issues. Not purposefully. They just don't think about social issues.

Silly Democrats say the GOP wouldn't nominate Reagan when it's virtually undeniable that the Dems wouldn't nominate Obama from 2008 because of his stance on gay marriage.

"Silly Democrats say the GOP wouldn't nominate Reagan when it's virtually undeniable that the Dems wouldn't nominate Obama from 2008 because of his stance on gay marriage."
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I don't know about the Democrats, but Bob Dole the other day seem to question the ability of Reagan, Nixon and himself in getting the nomination from the current Republican party primary process.

I don't think anyone actually believed that Obama was anti gay marriage in 2008 (or that he had or has particularly strong feelings about it in either direction.) If it had come up as a defining issue of the 2008 primary, both candidates would have made the jump.

It's like how Harry Truman integrated the armed forces. He didn't talk about it beforehand and he just did it. Democrats have also learned since 2000, that electability is everything.

But it's a different sort of issue. It's not like anyone in the 90's in either party was supporting gay marriage.

For this to be analogous, there would have had to have been a 1992 Democratic "Restore American families Act" that promoted marriage of all kinds including gay marriage.

You'd then have to have candidate Obama or Clinton coming out forcefully against the policy that their own party authored in the early 90's.

As someone said above, the Republicans have always hated the individual mandate in much the same way we've always been at war with Eurasia.

You said it before, Democrats don't really care about social issues, they care about getting elected. Talking about gay marriage in 1996 would not get you elected. While talking about it in 2012 would. Clinton or Obama would speak to their era.

I just want to let you know that from the outside you appear hyper-partisan. You're literally inventing hypothetical positions for Democrats to make them look better and refusing to do the same for Republicans.

rewt66,
On social issues, Kennedy Democrats were right-wing raving lunatics by today's standards. They opposed abortion and racial quotas. Women were viewed as wives and girlfriends (JFK's code name was Lancer). Gay rights were inconceivable.
On economic issues they were to left of today's moderate Republicans and probably most Democrats today. The Democratic party of the early 1960s was the party of private sector unions.
Kennedy Democrats would be far to the right of both current parties with respect to the welfare state. 47 million on food stamps and 14 million on disability would be deemed outrageous and unacceptable. By contrast, Bush recruited food stamp recipients by advertising in Spanish.
Kennedy did cut top tax rates. However, the tax rate obsession of modern Republicans would have seemed quite foreign to him. After all, Eisenhower didn't have a problem with 90% tax rates.
The Flat Earth mindset that drives trade policy these days and America's gigantic trade deficits would have seemed totally alien. Kennedy wanted America to be an exporter, not an importer of cheap towels.

Though you may be right - today's Democrats may have moved farther right in the last 50 years than Republicans have moved right. The Republicans were already most of the way there, whereas Democrats had to give up on things like civil liberties, human rights, and a secular government.

"The move towards socialized medicine (or at least a regime where private insurance companies are nailed to the wall and not treated as integral parts of the system) is one of those things that every rich civilized state across the world has done. Places like Taiwan, Singapore and Israel which are more conservative than the US is. "

the U.S.A. is not Taiwan, or Singapore, or the UK for that matter.

All of this is Kabuki theater. As Obama and Sebellius stated, the AHCA will eliminate private insurance (my own healthcare premiums have risen 78% over the last 4 years). We will end up with a single payer system.

But guess what the pinkies failed to consider when they ginned this thing up? The supply side of the equation. What you are not hearing about is the massive number of physicians who are retiring, or going into concierge or cash only practices.

So what do we end up with? A two-tiered system with an upper level for those who are willing to pay, and Barrycare for all of the deadbeats.

I'm not sure I agree that likelihood of opposition and obstruction should serve as the primary benchmark for legislation. True, Democrats should have expected the hostility they see now, and the Administration's overreliance on finger-wagging as a response doesn't do it any good. But the fact that there are divisions between the two parties on nearly all the major challenges that we face today do not reduce the need for Congress to address them. And I'm not sure this Congress (or for that matter the Democratic-controlled Congress in the previous Administration) can ever cobble together legislation based on the kind of consensus that W.W. seems to require. Maybe the immigration bill will be the test case.

The arc of history bends towards liberalism! The working class won't take these subsistence wages forever. They'll demand a more egalitarian economic order and an end to poverty. It's inevitable. And we'll eventually abandon the repressive sexual mores of religion. In fact, religion in general will be seen for what is it; a disorder. And scientists will be able to send a man to the moon and we'll find a vaccine for polio. Eugene Debs for president!

Yeah. I mean things do change from the past constantly, and for the better, it just rarely turns out to be what the change-agents of the time preached and prophesied.
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There are plenty of good "progressive" causes that came about, women's rights, gay rights, desegregation, the teaching of evolution, etc. and plenty of really bad "progressive" causes that didn't, like world communism, genetic hygiene, NIRA blue eagles, the great society, and a strategic firewood reserve etc. People always forget the innumerable really really bad progressive causes that went into the dustbin. I think we did a halfway decent job of picking the right ones.
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The point is that if you look backwards, you see a constant history of good progressive causes, but still the prescription of progressives at anytime are mostly bad ideas, because most new ideas are. And, thankfully, the worst ideas are the ones most likely to get knocked down by those standing athwart history yelling stop. That's conservative's role, and the really good ideas are those few that can manage to run them over.
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Obamacare, Green Everything, Gay Marriage, Food Stamp Helicopter Drops, QE, Cap and Trade, Responsibility to Protect, Late Term Abortion, Contraceptive Mandates, Industrial Policy, Lilly Ledbetter, Nine Buck Minimum Wages, Repealing DOMA, Auto-Bailouts, Cash for Clunkers, Gun Control, New START, Marijuana Prosecutions, Class Warfare, The Nissan Leaf, Solyndra, and the Tesla S-Class: I think that sums up Obama's Progressive Policies for America. Like all Progressives, nine out of ten of these are really bad ideas, but probably most that get passed, and stick through republican administrations will be good ideas.
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Personally, I don't want Obama to "fail", as a republican I just want Obama to be remembered as the first black president, and the guy who killed Osama Bin Laden and repealed DOMA, and that's pretty much it.

The problem is that universal healthcare run by the state is not some new idea. It's a thing that's been done in many, many other countries that all do it orders of magnitude cheaper and better than the United States does.

Places like Israel, Singapore and Taiwan. (I use those three since the go to bogeyman is always France.)

Also, several states have a 9 dollar minimum wage, and they're results vary just as much as states with lower wages.

I honestly can't tell if you are being serious or sarcastic? If the later then that was HILARIOUS! If the former, then I have a question: why are you labeling an ideology that in every way but name seems to be Socialism, with the word liberalism?

That's like saying that Massachusetts's health law worked, so it would obviously work for Mississippi. Context matters. Other places in the world can have universal health care because the U.S. acts as the world's policeman. If we become isolationist, military budgets shoot up around the world at the expense of social safety nets. Let's see 'em maintain universal health care without the disguised foreign aid that our military budget amounts to.

So you're suggesting that the US is poorer than these European nations? That we're the Mississippi to their Massachusetts?

The US does certainly subsidize other country's military expenditures, but it doesn't follow that the amount of that subsidy is equal to the amount they spend on universal healthcare or that Denmark would suddenly vastly expand their military if the US scrapped a carrier group.

My example was to point out that context matters. It's like a young person saying they're paying their own way, without mentioning circumstances like having a free room at their parents' house.

The amount of the US subsidy doesn't have to equal the amount they spend on healthcare. We are, in essence, buying security for the world on a wholesale basis, by which economies of scale occur. The savings we provide is many times greater than the actual excess we spend.

As someone who's lived in Taiwan for the past 3 and a half years, let me enlighten you about how the system works.

Taiwan has a government run insurer which pays private physicians and hospitals on the patient's behalf. It's essentially Medicare but extended to the entire population. The insurance premium is done through a payroll tax that's split with your employer.

It has 98% of the population enrolled and every single person has what's called a 建保卡 which is an insurance card you use when you go to the doctor.

From the wiki: "The current health care system in Taiwan, known as National Health Insurance (NHI, Chinese: 全民健康保險), was instituted in 1995. NHI is a single-payer compulsory social insurance plan which centralizes the disbursement of health-care funds. The system promises equal access to health care for all citizens, and the population coverage had reached 99% by the end of 2004.[4] NHI is mainly financed through premiums, which are based on the payroll tax, and is supplemented with out-of-pocket payments and direct government funding. In the initial stage, fee-for-service predominated for both public and private providers. Most health providers operate in the private sector and form a competitive market on the health delivery side. However, many health care providers took advantage of the system by offering unnecessary services to a larger number of patients and then billing the government. In the face of increasing loss and the need for cost containment, NHI changed the payment system from fee-for-service to a global budget, a kind of prospective payment system, in 2002."

Some wants Obamacare, but insurance will be the same or higher. Why do you want the same or higher insurance? Maybe you want it due to all of us will have insurance? Do you know that Medicaid is not accepted by hospitals and private practice now, except for children? States and Gov must pay at least as Medicare pays for it. Nobody has money for it until tax is up.

You want single payer? Do you know that in that case tax must be 5% up at least? Overtime is 50% taxed in Canada. 50K is salary for physician in Germany. Tax in Germany is also very high. Tax in Canada in store is 17% or so.

The left has kept the idea of "universal coverage" in their agenda for decades. I believe that the idea is now detached from reality, as the article suggests. Stated plainly; what Obamacare supporters believe Obamacare is and what Obamacare actually is are two different things.

Well written, and slightly insightful. I share your sentiments about your bike. I left my back door unlocked from 1992 to 2001, and never got burgled in that time.

But on inspection, the 'insight' seems to boil down to little more than 'liberals tend to overestimate the popularity of their ideas' - which is a well-worn observation applying to all shades of political opinion.

The point that interests me more is that Ezra Klein claims to know that big laws are changed in a solution of reality. He's the pundit who most annoys me by explaining what a law will or won't do, like he thinks the wording is destiny.

Part of the problem with the whole expectations game is that before enactment the debate assumes the law will work as written (or as presented as written) and after enactment the flaws become excuses.

I actually stopped reading Klein during the Obamacare debates. He kept talking about what the bill would and wouldn't do and it reminded me how young he is and that while I appreciate his effort to understand the law and explain it, I knew the law would not uniformly do what he promised nor would it dependably avoid what he promised it would not do. Hopefully this is him growing up.

That would probably be true of any reform of the health care system whether one that's piecemeal like this or an extreme change like complete government takeover or the end of all subsidies & regulation.
Is that a reason to do nothing at all? Politicians (and pundits) could be more honest that there might be some unforeseen consequences. But I don't think our political culture (and most voters) have the maturity for that. That applies to most things not just healthcare reform.

No, it's not a reason to do nothing but there's a cost to doing something. I don't expect politicians to remind us of that, and wouldn't even if we had better people in congress. But what else of value can pundits offer? The choice to act as second string rhetoricians seems like a very slight contribution and one most of us commenting below can meet for free and in a few minutes.

So...I'm very much at a loss to see what the author's point may be, unless it is, "Since they knew the Republicans would keep healthcare reform from being perfect (which is a reasonable and rightful thing for them to do), the Democrats should have done nothing about healthcare at all. All problems with healthcare are the Democrats' fault. Also, the Democrats had no motivation for trying to reform healthcare other than their own political calculation." I dislike the Democrats greatly - my dislike for them being exceded only by that I hold for the Republicans - but in this case I think they pretty much did what they did rightly, and did what they could.

p.s. When they are in opposition, and this is a goodly part of why I dislike them less than the Republicans, they do not follow what seems to be the author's suggestion and just mindlessly oppose everything the other side suggests.

I don't recall a significant period where the Dems had enough votes to force cloture. In the 110th Congress, the Dems had a majority of 51, counting the two independents versus the Repuyblican's 49. Not enough to prevent a filibuster.

Democrats passed a law that was apparently unread using pretty shady tactics at midnight on Christmas Eve despite understanding that more than half of the states and elected representatives opposed it. Problems resulting from enacting and attempting to implement this hotly opposed law are, indeed, problems that the Democrats caused for themselves and they own the whole thing.

Should they have tried to reform the way that healthcare works is another question entirely - we are talking about what actually happened, not some ideal effort that gained support from the people effected by the law.

As the other commenter pointed out you also have to look at relations in Congress and politics as a continuoum - when Bush was in office and the Democrats held Congress they were models of the type of base obstructionism and irritating rhetoric that has set the basic standard for how it seems that the two parties will get along (or not get along). I wish that it was otherwise but neither party has been a passive participant in creating a poisonous atmosphere.

"To your PS, were you paying attention between 2006 and 2008 when the Dems controlled Congress and Republicans controlled the Executive"
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Well they voted to continue funding the war, including the surge in Iraq.
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And they played ball in terms of the bailouts and measures to head of the financial credit crunch.
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At least enough of them did.
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I am a Republican, but the fact is on the important stuff, the Democrats played ball.